Familiars for adoption
by Poliamida
Summary: A place for me to drop all my crazy ideas. Most will be one-shots that won't turn into actual stories so, if any of them inspire you, you are free to continue them.
1. Louise Special Squadron

Louise Special Squadron

"Yes!" Louise's explosion of joy was certainly infectious. After so many failures, and oh-God-so-many accidents, she had finally done it! She had finally casted a successful spell and her reward was an incredible familiar! "Aren't you cute? I'll kiss you, and love you, and hug you and call you Percival!"

"That's enough, Valliére!" Montmorency complained at her side. "You're being annoying."

"You're just being jealous of my great familiar."

"Bu-but! We both summoned frogs!" The blonde girl exclaimed holding up her own familiar, a red and blue frog named Robin.

"Yes, but mine is bigger." Louise countered showing her tongue.

"That's what he said!" Came a sultry voice at their backs.

"Shut up, Kirche!" Both girls said at the same time, annoyed at the intervention of the Germanian student.

"Come on, girls, you just make it too easy for me!"

As they talked, a petite blue-haired girl approached the group. Followed by her own familiar, a female blue dragon called Sylphid, she started inspecting what Louise had summoned. "Strange." She said.

"What do you mean, Tabi?" Kirche asked her friend.

"Tail." The girl, called Tabitha, started pointing out. "And antennas."

Yes, it was a strange couple of appendages that the creature had. No one had ever heard of a frog with a tail, and with two antennas on top of its head. Besides, the shade of green of its skin was just weird, unlike any other amphibian they had seen before. And its red eyes were downright terrifying.

"I don't care!" Louise affirmed hugging her familiar against her chest. "Dear Percival here is perfect as he is!"

"Miss Valliére?" Came another voice, this time, a masculine and older one, and the girls straightened their backs at the presence of their teacher.

"Ye-yes, Professor Colbert?"

"Would you allow me your familiar for a second?" Unwilling to say no to the older mage, the girl quickly handled Percival to him. "Very curious." The man murmured to himself as he inspected the animal. "I have never seen a species such as this before."

"Is-is there something wrong, Professor?" Louise asked but the man didn't seem to notice her. "Professor?"

"What? Oh, yes, sorry. It seems I spaced out for a second there."

"I wouldn't have guessed." Kirche said under her breath, just loud enough for the other students to hear her.

"In any case, here you have." Colbert said giving Percival back to his master.

"Thank you, professor."

The man answered with a warm smile and turned to address the rest of the crowd. "Alright class, let's return to the classroom!"

One by one, each of the twenty students started raising from the ground thanks to the power of their magic.

Except for one.

"Hey, Louise, are you going to be ok?" A concerned Montmorency, already a couple meter above the ground, asked her friend.

"Yes, sure!" Louise answered with a determined face, but deep down she was shaking. "Now that I have my familiar, everything is going to be fine!" That was the idea, wasn't it? She would summon a familiar and then everything would go better for her, her magic would start working, and her family would be proud of her.

Yes, sure, and maybe she would kiss her familiar and it would end up being a prince.

"Okay, Percival." She told the frog she had safely put under her shirt. "Time to show what we can do!" She pulled out her wand and pronounced the incantations for the spell. "Levitation!" Her feet detached from the ground and her whole body started graciously raising from the ground. "Come on, come on, that's good." And then it abruptly stopped, ending with Louise falling on her rear. "Ouch." She groaned. "No problem! That always happens!" She tried again and, this time, she managed to remain stationary for a couple of seconds without the spell falling on her. "All right, now a bit to the right… no! No! The other right… agh!" She ended up crashing into a tree some twenty meters from her starting position. "That's it!" She told herself. "Enough subtleties!" Getting her wand ready again, she proceeded to cast the spell once more, this time putting as much Willpower she could behind it. "Levitation!"

* * *

The class was already halfway through when Colbert noticed that one of his students was missing. "Excuse me, your attention please!" He called the group. "Has anybody seen…"

At that moment, a pink shadow flew right past his eyes. "ahahahahahahahah… AHAHAHAHAHAHA… ahahahahah…!" Then they heard a loud crash and saw a column of smoke rising up from one of the Academy's towers.

"Oh dear God!" Colbert exclaimed and quickly put more power behind his spell to rush to the scene.

"Look! She actually managed to hit her room!" Kirche commented.

"Will… will she be okay, miss Montmorency?" Asked Guiche, a blond-haired boy who had been trying to get on the girl's good side.

"Sure, she has some very strong bones."

* * *

Later that night, Louise found herself alone in her room, already on her nightgown and with Percival on her lap. She was barely holding back her tears. "Why does this always happen?" She asked her familiar as she pointed at the planks that were covering the vaguely Louise-shaped hole in the wall. "I'm such a failure." She knew the animal couldn't answer her, but she didn't care. Having someone to talk to was enough. She did have Montmorency, but the girl was physically incapable of keeping secrets. "I can't control my magic. It always fails or destroys everything." She cleaned her watery eyes with the back of her hand. "I thought that with you around everything would go better, but… I don't know." She gently placed her frog on the ground next to her bed. "Goodnight, Percival. Tomorrow will be another day. Another long, long day." She leaned back and in less than a minute she was fast asleep.

Meanwhile, at her side, the frog she had named Percival was still awake. Far from being a simple beast, he was quite intelligent and knew that his master was in pain and in need of his help. He remembered having a great master in his past life, but ever since that morning it was getting progressively more difficult to remember what he had been doing before being summoned to that strange new planet. Oh, well, if he was already forgetting about it, then is surely was because it wasn't worth being remembered. In any case, he had a Master in need of his assistance, and for his honor, he wouldn't leave her waiting! But what could he do? His powerful froggy muscles -far more powerful than those of any common frog- would allow him to jump up to his master's bed, but after that, there was very little he could do to cheer her up. It was so frustrating! That pathetic body was so limited! If only he had his old body, but there was no way of getting it back.

Or was it?

Ever since his arrival, he had been feeling different. His throat had been aching and he felt a pressure that hadn't been there before.

He didn't dare to hope, but if he was right and had recovered his ultimate technique…

This was worth testing out!

* * *

Siesta was a cheerful girl who worked at the Academy of Magic. She had many duties, including cleaning, cooking and feeding the animals. But, on that particular night, she got the job of washing the noble's clothes. So, with a basket full of dirty clothes in one hand and an empty bucket on the other, she went to the central fountain to get some water.

"Eh, who are you?" She asked the creature she found there. It was a green frog with a tail and two antennas on top of its head. She immediately recognized it as one the recently summoned familiars. "What are you doing here, little one?" Putting the basket and bucket aside, she picked the animal up and raised it to her eyes. "Shouldn't you be with your Master?" She looked at the frog and felt a chill running down her back. There was something that wasn't right with that animal. His red eyes, staring back at her… there was an intelligence behind them.

Before she could understand what was happening, the frog opened his mouth and shouted: "Change!"

...

* * *

A/N: An idea I had while watching the Frieza Saga again. Now, as you probably noticed, in this universe Louise isn't a void mage, she just sucks, and that changed her relationship with other characters. The reason behind this will be revealed in a later snipped, but you can already start guessing.


	2. Cry Wolf

I did a second thing!

Cry Wolf

A Familiar of Zero x The Witcher Fusion

* * *

Professor Cattleya paced back and forth under the shadow of the western walls.

She was nervous. She was nervous about the Academy, she was nervous about her students, and she was nervous about…

"Are you fine, Lady Valliére?" One of the guards that accompanied her asked.

"Ye-yes, I'm fine. Thank you, Oswald." She lied. "I'm just worried. I fear for…"

"Please, my lady," Interrupted another man, one named Avaro. "Don't tell me you are worried for that mutant!"

"My good sir!" She yelled at him. "How you dared to talk like that?"

The man just shrugged his shoulders. "I call things as I see them. Tell me I'm lying." Cattleya shifted the weight of her feet but was incapable of finding an argument against that. "Besides, the mutant is the expert here, isn't she? She will be fine."

"You think?" Came the voice of Diego, the oldest of the guards, and, by virtue of that, the most scarred. "Have any of you seen a cockatrice before?" The other, younger soldiers, just shook their heads. "That beast… are the stuff of nightmares!" He lowered his voice in recollection of the past. "I fought one back in the Gramont dutchy. Twenty of us went in, I was the only one to return. Those things… those bastards, their scales are immune to magic, their eyes can turn you to stone, a drop of their spit can kill a thousand men, and their claws can split open a suit of armor as if it was…"

"Movement!" Screamed one of the crossbowmen, immediately aiming his weapon at the edge of the forest where they could already see a shape coming closer.

"Stand back, my lady!" Diego told Cattleya, pushing her behind him and raising his shield. "If it's the cockatrice…"

But it wasn't.

The figure that came through the trees was one that Cattleya would have been incapable of describing as anything but frightening.

Her white hair was frightening. It simply clashed with her otherways juvenile look.

The two swords at her back were frightening. One of steel for men, the other of silver for monsters, both showed the signs of extensive use.

And her eyes! Those inhuman feline eyes! Devoid of any emotion, those were the eyes of a predator stalking its prey, just waiting for the right moment, the right opening, to strike it down.

"The job is done." She said, throwing a severed head in front of the soldier's formation. It looked like a rooster's head, but no rooster was the size of a horse, nor it had razor-sharp teeth in its beak.

The guards stared at the remains of the monster that had been plaguing the forest, and then at the woman who had killed it, unsure of whom they had to be more scared of.

"Now," She continued. "Where is my money?" If Cattleya hadn't known better, she would have thought that she wasn't more that fourteen. But it couldn't be. If she was already on the path, that meant she had already seen more than sixteen winters. She would be just the right age...

"Oh, yes, of course." Cattleya announced as she shook her head to vanish poisonous thoughts. "I have it right here, miss Siesta." She gave her a purse full of gold coins. The girl inspected it before nodding in approval.

"That will be all, then."

"Ah, yes. But, before you go… eh… where did you leave the… rest?"

The girl, who had presented herself as Siesta, gave her a deadpanned look. "It's back there. It was too big for me to haul it." She explained. "I understand that the body has some very powerful reagents?"

"Ah, yes, you're right!" Cattleya nodded and turned to Diego. "My good sir, I'd need you to take your men and collect the body."

While the two woman had been talking, Diego and his men had formed a circle around the head. Most of them had never seen such a creature before and were noticeably curious about it. That's why the captain wasn't paying attention when the professor made her request. "I'm sorry my lady, what did you say?"

"I asked you to bring me the body." Cattleya repeated herself. "If that's not much of a problem?"

"Oh, no, of course not!" Diego said and turned to address the other guards. "Men, you heard the lady! I want the clearing clean and safe! On the double, move, move!"

In no time the soldiers had parted, leaving the woman alone.

"It was such a fortune to find a Witcher in so little time." Cattleya said turning to Siesta, who was already some steps ahead of her and walking to her horse. "We were worried that we would have to cancel the summoning ritual tomorrow." She continued, jogging to catch up with the Witcher. "It was so unfortunate that such a dangerous creature had appeared here. Most of the time the keep to themselves, but…"

Siesta stopped and turned to address the professor. "Is there something you wish to ask me, Lady Valliére?" Cattleya stared back at her, mouth agape. "If not, I'll ask you to let me be. The path awaits me."

The professor tried to keep her eyes leveled, but couldn't keep her stare, and lowered in guilt. "I… yes." She admitted. "I was unsure… but you look around the age and…"

"Just… speak." Siesta interrupted her, the Witcher's voice adopting an uncharacteristically warm tone.

"I wanted to ask you about my sister."

"Louise?"

"You knew her?"

Siesta flinches at that and turns around to not see Cattleya in the eyes. "I… yes." She tells her. "Most of our recruits are orphans or bastards that have nowhere else to go. Or children that are given to us as form of payment." She made a pause before continuing. "A noble girl is indeed a rare sight among us."

"So, is she…?"

"She's dead." The words cut deep into Cattleya. "She died in training."

"I… I understand. That's what they told us, but…" She tried to continue, but it was hard with the tears running down her cheeks. "Could… Could I, at least, know how it happened?"

Siesta just stares back at her and, for a moment, Cattleya feared that she wasn't going to answer her. "The trial of grasses is a dangerous affair, milady. Including your sister, ten of us went through it that day. I was the only one who woke up the next."

It was painful. That was what they had told her, what they told her family. That her younger sister was dead and buried. Knowing the causes of her death didn't give Cattleya reassurance, but at least gave her closure.

"Thank you. Thank you for being honest with me." She saw a shiver running down the other woman's back, but it was soon gone. "I wish you good luck in your path."

"And good luck to you too, lady Valliére. And my regards to your mother." Siesta bid her farewell and made her leave.

Walking to her horse, Siesta of Tarbes -as she had chosen to name herself- put her recently acquired money inside the safety of the saddles before climbing up to her mount. With a snap of the reins, she rode away into the distance.

Some of her fellow witchers believed in faith, convinced that every action was guided by an invisible hand.

She didn't believe in that. Her mother had taught her that faith was nothing more than pure nonsenses, the sorry excuse of weaker men too scared to take their own decisions.

But it couldn't have been a coincidence that her very first job after exiting the School of the Wolf had been with Cattleya de la Valliere. That had been just… cruel.

For a moment she allowed herself to wonder, what would have happened if her mother hadn't given her to the Wolves? Would she be there now? Studying magic with her sister as teacher?

As soon as those treacherous thoughts materialized in her head, she crushed them. The rule of steel had demanded her sacrifice, it was as simple as that. Both she and her mother had understood and accepted that, and she would do it again if given the chance. Not doing so would have meant Henrietta been the one taken away, forced to endure that training, forced to endure that hell.

It was said that Witchers had no emotions.

The tears running down Siesta of Tarbes' face were proof that was false.

* * *

A/N: Another snipped down the line. In this universe, the schools of witchery exist in Halkeginia, and are still very active. The premise here is that the King of Tristain has a deal with the School of the Wolf where he is always accompanied by two Witcher bodyguards but, if one of them dies in service, the King has to replace him.


End file.
